I discovered a new blog today: You are Not so Smart. In addition to the fabulous name, it looks like they do a good job concisely summarizing cognitive errors in humorous ways. Each post tackles a "misconception", following it with the boldly named "The Truth."The blog post that got me there is about Deindividuation. The description does a nice job relating the concept of individuation to how some people are using the term "hive mind". I like how the writer personalizes the explanation, leading to a thought experiment: "This is going to be hard to believe, but this sort of behavior could be inside you as well. Under the right circumstances, you too might yell “Jump!” To understand why, let’s go shopping for costumes." The post goes on to describe Diener's clever Halloween Candy study (which would be an easy study for high school students to replicate, I think)
The archives of You are Not so Smart might be a useful place to check occasionally for misconceptions to tackle in your classroom.
posted by Rob McEntarffer
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